What issues face stateless children who wish to go to school?
Although stateless children have had legal access to education since mid-2005, there are a number of obstacles to achieving this right. If and when children are finally able to attend school, they endure further hurdles which, when combined with pressure from home to help supplement the family income, results in almost all stateless students leaving education by the age of 12 years - at the end of primary education.
Somewhere in the region of 90% of migrant workers' children were born in Thailand, negating the possibility of returning to Myanmar as citizens and condemning them to a life of statelessness in Thailand.
To get even a basic education is difficult when parents are moving from job to job, but the Thai education system seems more intent on assimilation rather than education for this group of people. There is also a lack of information of their right to education. In short, most migrant families aren't aware that their children are allowed to study at all.
Many schools are worried that registering a stateless child will have detrimental effects on the school, and may get the staff into trouble. Staff believe that registering a stateless person shows they have been accepted by a Thai school and may be used as a way of applying for citizenship, which could put them in the spotlight further down the line.
Those that do enter the system struggle because they must have a command of Thai language - no classes are taught in their ethnic dialect - and the curriculum is largely irrelevant to the daily lives of the students. Admission is only possible at the beginning of a term, which impacts on families which move during term time. Students are often also placed in lower grades, rather than the one appropriate to their age, which has an impact on development due to the differences in physical and emotional development.
Many children who wish to go to school are unable to do so because they must care for younger siblings. The state system will not allow them to bring their younger brother or sister to school as well, causing them to miss out some days or altogether.
The standard curriculum taught is targeted to finish at the end of secondary education. The problem with this is two-fold. Firstly, of the stateless children who do manage to attend, most have left school by the age of 12, at the end of primary education. The pressure to earn money to add to the family income is strong, either from the parents or the children themselves. Secondly, the subjects taught generally have little to do with real life. The children are not taught their mother tongue, which reduces their ability to return to Myanmar (if possible or desired) and negatively impacts on the retention of their cultures and traditions. There are no skills taught which will be of practical value when they leave school.
These problems combine to make the ability to access education for stateless children a difficult process, which turns out to be a fairly redundant exercise.